


an echo lost in space

by heartunsettledsoul



Series: Forgotten Moments [19]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 3x02 fix-it, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, and jughead jones is just trying to figure it all out, in which betty cooper is an anxious mess, my tired idiotic soft s3 babies, they both are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 06:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16382762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: It wasn’t that Betty purposely didn’t tell Jughead about the seizure. It just ...kept not happening.When she woke up in the hospital, scared and confused, her first instinct had been a fierce need for him to be there with her. Upon hearing from her mother and the doctors what had happened, that desire for his presence quickly melted into deep shame; shame for having to be in the hospital, for not holding herself together better, for finally letting all of this get the best of her.She’s supposed to be the strong one, the one who doesn’t need to bounce back because she doesn’t fall to begin with.Once she realizes what’s going on, Betty doesn’t want anyone to see her like this, least of all Jughead.or, a 3x02 fix-it





	an echo lost in space

**Author's Note:**

> I’d say I’m back on my bullshit, but I don’t know that I was ever technically off it to begin with

-

It wasn’t that Betty purposely didn’t tell Jughead about the seizure. It just ...kept not happening.

When she woke up in the hospital, scared and confused, her first instinct had been a fierce need for him to be there with her. Upon hearing from her mother and the doctors what had happened, that desire for his presence quickly melted into deep shame; shame for having to be in the hospital, for not holding herself together better, for finally letting all of this get the best of her.

She’s supposed to be the strong one, the one who doesn’t need to bounce back because she doesn’t fall to begin with.

Once she realizes what’s going on, Betty doesn’t want _anyone_ to see her like this, least of all Jughead.

She’ll tell him at school in the morning, she decides.

But then she walks into the Blue and Gold, sees Juggie's distraught face, hears about what _he’d_ dealt with the night before, sees the earnest excitement about investigating for old time’s sake, and decides she’ll tell him after school is over for the day.

After school becomes _well we were just in the morgue looking at our dead classmate, maybe tomorrow,_ becomes _let’s get through today and see how Ben is,_ becomes _after we talk to Ethel,_ becomes _well it’s been long enough and I feel fine,_ becomes Alice spilling her unintended secret and Betty’s heart splintering at the break in Jughead’s voice and the hurt on his face when he realizes what she hadn’t shared with him.

It becomes a mistake she hadn’t even meant to make.

-

Tears flow hard from her eyes, so much so that she barely makes it to the staircase landing before they turned into full-fledged sobs.

Betty thinks she might hear Jughead saying something in the foyer, followed by the voices of her mother and FP. She’s not sure if she’s more afraid Jughead following her or of him _not_ following her, but when the slam of the front door reverabates all the way up to the hall of her bedroom and she can’t hear the telltale stomp of Jughead’s step, the fissure starting in her chest turns into a full-fledged crack.

Everything feels wrong.

The hurt immanent in his words, the shake of her own hands as she desperately avoids curling them into fists, her sharpness of her mother’s reprimand that melts into surprise, the shock on even FP’s face at the realization that his son’s golden-girl girlfriend didn’t tell him something this huge.

_Did you have a seizure and not tell me about it?_

This isn’t her; this isn’t something Betty Cooper _does,_ blatantly keeping things from the people in her life.

(Except that it _is._ Because did she not do just that mere months before? Did she not follow the whims of a sadistic killer—her own _father_ —and keep things from her best friends, the boy she loves? Betty Cooper, as it turns out, _does_ keep things from the people in her life. She wants to believe she can handle it all on her own, keep it all under control. Be the perfect girl everyone expects her to be.

Betty Cooper, as it turns out, cannot handle anything on her own. And it makes her want to crawl into a very dark hole, and never come out.)

_Did you have a seizure and not tell me about it?_

_Not tell me about it?_

_Not tell me?_

 -

They had plans to go investigate tonight.

It’s jarring, to have this non-intrusive thought pop up so suddenly among nothing but intrusive thoughts; Betty is so used to the reverse, it is so much more often that she has the normal thoughts of _get up, drink coffee, get to work or to school, keep working_ interrupted by an intrusive _you are not good enough for this, at this, for him, for them._

Yet here she is, counting her inhales and exhales like all the anxiety articles tell her to do in an effort to keep herself from spiraling into another stress-induced seizure and all the sudden— _well, Betty, don’t forget that you’re supposed to sneak out into the woods to investigate a mysterious role-playing game that possibly has killed one of your classmates and could kill two more._

What has her life become?

-

The blinking cursor in her text message app is mocking her.

Her text thread with Jughead—contact name _Juggie,_ with the magnifying glass emoji, added at his joking suggestion and her arched eyebrow of defiance when she got her new, post-Black Hood phone—is silent.

They’d spent most of the afternoon together, so there’s nothing since his _I’ll be at the b &g in 5 _ after final period. What does someone even say in this situation?

_I’m sorry I never mentioned my insane hallucination and successive seizure._

_I should have told you._

_I didn’t mean to lie._

_I think my mom and Polly might be gaslighting me._

_Please don’t hate me._

_I love you._

Betty types out each attempted message before furiously tapping the backspace button and letting the screen on her phone go dark.

She starts to pace circles, letting the material of the carpet sink between her bare toes and wishing she had even an ounce of energy in her body to stamp her feet or throw a tantrum or do anything that would create enough noise to signal to her mother that she is hopelessly, completely infuriated.

Instead she flops back onto the bed.

She picks at the hangnail on her left thumb. The sharpness of the pain brings her relief and the tension releases from her body in such a rush that it scares her. _It’s not the same,_ she tries to tell herself. _You’re not breaking the skin of your palms, you’re just picking a hangnail, everybody does that._

( _Not everybody has the tendency to self-harm,_ she also tells herself. The tiny voice telling her sounds like a hodgepodge of people in her life; a bit of Jughead, some of Ronnie, a bit more of her best self, the one that seems to have taken a semi-permanent vacation from her brain.)

The hangnail starts to bleed and she brings it to her mouth to stop the drop of blood from dripping onto her too-pink, too-pristine bed.

Tears well up in her eyes again so treads over to her bathroom to pull a band-aid from her meticulously stocked and recently untouched stash from the makeup bag behind her tampons in the bathroom cabinet. One of the wax covers flutters to the floor as she wraps it around the offending skin; she watches it fall onto the tile at the base of the toilet where she flushed the remaining Adderall pills upon her return from the hospital.

 _You’re being ridiculous._ This time the voice is definitely Veronica. _Talk to your boyfriend, B._

The cursor mocks her for a few more minutes until she finally says: _Please come back._

-

 _My dad physically escorted me home._ His answering message shows up less than ninety seconds after Betty hits send.

(She counted her inhales and exhales again.)

_I’ll come over as soon as I can._

The ache in her chest eases up, ever so slightly.

_Thank you._

-

When her mom shows in her doorway with tea—the tea bag is still in the mug, attached to a tag that says something annoyingly positive, but a branded tea bag just the same—Betty feels a strange kind of relief.

She’s not sure when she last associated her mother with the feeling of _comfort_ , but it overwhelms her; she’s caught up in memories of chicken soup delivered in bed when she was home sick with the flu in fourth grade, her hair being smoothed off her forehead, being wrapped up in a hug and feeling safe.

The ache in her chest is back, but it feels different. It’s the one she’s been ignoring since whispering _no more_ to her father through a plexiglass window in prison, since every memory of her childhood turned to ash. The one that looms so large she’s buried it deep, deep down with Archie’s defense and endless journaling and Jughead’s mouth sucking bruises onto her skin.

(This one needs to stay buried for a while longer, she knows. She swallows the chamomile and it burns her tongue. The pain, once again, is an excellent distraction.)

-

Her mother bids her goodnight and she feels the guilt over not telling Jughead so strongly again that she thinks about removing the bandaid from her thumb and digging into the tender skin.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

- 

_Did you have a seizure and not tell me about it?_

-

_Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale._

_-_

Betty gets out of bed and pulls the hoodie Jughead left by accident last time from the back of her vanity chair.

It’s been sitting there for long enough that it smells more like her own perfume than Jughead’s fabric softener, but the drape of the extra fabric and the knowledge that it’s his settles her mind. She pulls the sleeves over her hands and focuses on her breathing, on the thought of Jughead’s smile, on all the happy memories they created over the summer.

(Him bringing her coffee at the McCoys’ kitchen table while she pours over old files for precedence; milkshakes shared during the dead heat of July, because drinking two separately would take so long they would melt; the rough way he pulls her to him after she tries on her Serpent jacket over her favorite pink sundress, growling “that’s so _hot_ ” before he goes down on her while she wears nothing _but_ the jacket; lazy mornings making pancakes in the Cooper kitchen when Alice is at the Farm and Jughead sleeps over just for the sake of sleeping over; every time they say they love each other, simply and confidently as though they were saying the sky is blue.)

Her phone buzzes with an _on my way._

Betty continues to breathe.

- 

The nights have cooled down enough that Betty’s window is closed when Jughead ascends the seemingly ever-present ladder and knocks on the glass.

Though she’d known he was coming, and had anticipated his arrival in this manner, it doesn’t stop the excited leap of her heart when she sees his face through the pane. As she lifts it, Betty feels a rush of nostalgia for the first time he climbed through this window. It evolves into affection as she watches him clamber through just as awkwardly before reaching out to her.

“Nurse is still on duty,” she mumbles into his flannel, accepting the hug gratefully.

Jughead snorts softly. “God that was a shitty line. We both know you’re way more of a Beatrice.” He presses a kiss into her hair and squeezes her tighter into the hug for a beat before speaking again. “Can we talk?”

Even though she wants to hide her face, Betty knows better. The way to do this properly, to keep the strength in their relationship they gained over the last few months, is to deal with this.

So she pulls back slightly, looks Jug in the eye, and nods. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Talking is good.”

- 

She’s fidgety as they sit down on the edge of her bed. She tucks her legs up under herself and rolls the hem of hoodie’s sleeve between her fingers, turning to look at him.

He notices her disquiet, because he’s Jughead and he _knows_ her, so of course he does.

Just like that night so long ago in the diner—almost a year ago now, she realizes with a start—Jughead gathers up her hands in his and kisses their joined fingers. The look in his eyes is just as intense as that night, if not more so.

(Definitely more so, Betty thinks. It _means_ more now that she did this—or _didn’t_ do this, as it is. The stakes are bigger for them now. It feels more raw.)

“Can you— I— Betts, _are you okay?”_      

Again, his voice shakes during the question, cracking slightly on the _okay._ Betty feels more tears stinging in her eyes and can see him blinking furiously to keep his own from falling.

She nods, not trusting herself to open her mouth without breaking into sobs again.

“Thank god,” he breathes.

-

“They think it was a one-time thing,” Betty finally says after they’ve both sat in tear-filled silence for a few minutes. “The doctor said it was just stress.”

Jughead looks pained. “Great, and I ask you to investigate a double suicide-slash-murder. That should help with the stress levels.”

Betty can’t help but grin. “Weirdly, investigating something crazy with you is the least stressful, most normal thing I can think of.” It’s their normal, as objectively abnormal as it may be. Betty is most at peace, her brain calm, when she and Jughead are together working on something insane. “It kind of reminds me of like when we first start dating, remember?”

The memory of it all invades her senses, and the softened expression on Jughead’s face tells her that it’s doing the same for him. Working in the Blue and Gold office for the first time, sneaking around the Blossom house, ditching school to find Polly—it both feels like years and seconds ago.

She’s so grateful to have had Jughead through it.

“I remember. And that’s why ...that’s why I’m struggling with why you wouldn’t tell me something like this, Betts. Look at everything we’ve been through. Look at the misery we were stuck in last year when we didn’t tell each other big, huge, life-threatening things. I thought we were past this.”

The pain in her chest intensifies, and nausea over the guilt twists in her gut. Cupped in his hands, still, her own close into fists.

“I’m not,” he follows up quickly, smoothing her hands flat with his own. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just trying to understand.”

So is she.

-

“It’s embarrassing,” Betty admits. “All summer, everyone kept watching me like I was a ticking time bomb, like I was about to fall to pieces. I hated that. I’m the only sane one left in my family, at this rate. I don’t want to be the mess everybody expects of me, I have to keep it together. And the seizure was me ...I guess it was me not keeping it together.”

Jughead swallows hard and kisses her hands again. “It’s okay to not keep it together, Betty. That’s—” he clears his throat—“that’s what I can be here for, okay? If you’re not keeping it together, let me help you. Or let me be there. Or something, anything.”

-

“I keep thinking of you waiting for me to wake up in the hospital in the spring,” Jughead says. His voice is thick with emotion, agony mixed with what Betty recognizes as his patented self-loathing. “I can’t believe I put you through that. I wasn’t even _there_ for it but the thought of you in the hospital is too much for me, and I feel like I deserved even more than that to make it even.”

Betty wants to roll her eyes, tell him he’s being ridiculous. But he just looks so morose, she can’t bring herself to call him on it. “Next time,” she starts to say, until Jughead looks up at her sharply. “ _If_ there’s a next time,” she amends, “I will call you right away.”

-

The desperate, needy way he looks at her is Betty’s only clue to his next move. His mouth crashes against hers, their hands still locked together until Betty frees one of her own to knock off his beanie and tug gently through his hair. He makes a noise of dissatisfaction before pulling back to look at her.

 _No,_ she wants to whine. That’s not what she meant.

She pulls at his hair again, directing him toward the dip of her neck and he catches on. His teeth graze her earlobe and her entire body shivers.

“Yeah?” he murmurs, doing it again but biting down just a bit harder. A whimper loud enough to get them caught erupts from her before she even knows it’s happening and Jughead kisses her quiet. WIth one hand still laced through hers, he brings the other up to her mouth and presses his thumb over her lips.

“Gotta be quiet, baby,” he shushes her. He nips at her ear once more and then the heat of his mouth and hands is _everywhere._

Lips on her collarbone, fingers pulling the neck of the sweatshirt down with her shirt and the soft cup of her bra, teeth against her breast, hands pulling down the zipper of her jeans and slipping into the lace she’d put on this morning only because she’s due for laundry and it was clean.

Jughead is momentarily distracted by it, yanking her jeans down and staring at the dark blue fabric, mouth agape.

“Completely unintentional,” Betty laughs.

He plucks at the waistband, rubbing the fabric between the pads of his forefinger and thumb. Betty knows that movement, wants that movement done _elsewhere_ on her, and clears her throat pointedly to indicate so.

Mercifully, he gets the hint. The action moves the rough lace against sensitive skin in such a way that Betty keens too loudly again and they both freeze, waiting for footsteps and the inevitable wrath of Alice.

It doesn’t come.

After they resume, it only takes a few more swift movements of fingers against underwear for Betty to.

-

Finishing makes Betty feel boneless and unable to care that all the lights are on, her mother is downstairs, and she’s sweaty on her bed with one nipple exposed and her boyfriend’s hand inside her.

One finger on said hand twitches and Betty almost launches off the bed in reaction to how sensitive every inch of flesh is.

“Fuck,” she huffs out.

Jughead raises an eyebrow at her. “That’s kind of the idea, Betts.”

-

She’s feeling deliciously sated in a way that tells her she probably can’t finish again this time and so Betty moves to straddle Jughead and make him come that way.

(It’s her favorite, because it lights every nerve in her body on fire and makes her feel a little powerful and has the distinct advantage of putting her chest level with Jughead’s tongue.)

It’s not how they do it every time, but not once has Jughead complained when she sinks down on him from that angle.

This time, though, as she’s simultaneously reaching for a condom and swinging one leg over him, he stops her with a soft hand on her thigh.

“Juggie?”

“Can I…” he trails off, and she thinks it may be because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I really want to look at you tonight.”

_Oh._

She nods her yes and slips under him, watching the way the lamplight draws shadows on his cheekbones and makes his eyelashes look even longer than usual. It amazes her how he can fit such reverence into a single look, but when he drags his gaze—along with both hands skimming over her—from the tips of the chipped pink polish on her toes up to her cheeks, Betty feels like she could burn alive from the love in his eyes.

With her face cupped in one hand, Jughead kisses her sweetly and then pushes into her in a rough thrust that takes her breath away. All of the heavy emotions of the day swirl and mix with their sweat-slicked skin, fusing them together in more ways than one. He holds onto her like she might disappear if he lets go, so Betty digs her nails his hips to guide him faster, harder and lets herself believe that they’re the only things keeping each other tethered to the ground.

When she hitches one leg higher around him and sighs, “I love you,” into his ear, Jughead has to muffle his groan by burying his face in her hair while he finishes.

For a long moment they stay tangled together, breathing heavily and unable to tear their gaze off one another.

-

“For what it’s worth, Juggie,” Betty whispers into the quiet of the night later, when they’re creeping toward the edge of the woods. “At the hospital, before I knew what was happening, you were my first thought. All I wanted was you to hold my hand.”

Jughead makes an indiscernible noise, like a swallowed sob. He lifts their joined hands, visible only from the moonlight and the glow of the flashlight on his phone.

“I’ve always got you Betty.”

-

**Author's Note:**

> as always, please let me know if you read and enjoyed!


End file.
